Andre Santos Campos

Spinoza is among the most pivotal thinkers in the history of philosophy. He has had a deep and enduring influence on a wide range of philosophical subjects, and his work is encountered by all serious students of Western philosophy. His _Ethics_ is one of the seminal works of metaphysical, moral, religious and political thought; his _Theological-Political Treatise_ inaugurated a novel method of biblical exegesis; and both his political works developed the pre-eminence of democracy above all other regimes. Nevertheless, the significance of Spinoza's philosophy is matched by its complexity. His system presents a considerable challenge for the modern student; his language is frequently opaque, while the esoteric themes explored in his work often require elucidation. _Spinoza: Basic Concepts_ intends to overcome most of such difficulties. Each essay in this collection explores a key concept involved in Spinoza’s thinking, relating it to his understanding of philosophy, outlining the arguments and explaining the implications of each concept. Together, the chapters cover the full range of Spinoza’s interdisciplinary system of philosophy.

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 368-389, April 2022. Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants from political agency. One of the suggestions to bypass the epistemic requirement of political agency and to encourage the inclusion of infants in representative democracies is to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be coincidental with their interests. However, this solution is far from desirable, given that it privileges the political agency of parents, guardians and trustees over other adult citizens. This article offers an alternative to this conceptual frame of reference by making a case for the political agency of infants. Firstly, it maintains that political agency can be understood in terms of the several facets involved in political representation. Secondly, it claims that the all-affected principle can be reformulated as an ‘infant-affected-interests principle’ in light of which infants are members of the class of the represented. Thirdly, it explores the ways through which this political agency can occur without having to resort to alternative conceptions of representation. The conclusion ascertains that infant enfranchisement is highly undesirable and that there are more viable forms to promote infant political agency, such as virtual representation, infant-beneficial principles of political action and ombudspersons for infants.

O “paradoxo da liberdade” consiste em esta só poder ser atingida através da obediência, a qual é vista frequentemente como o contrário da liberdade. Neste artigo, demonstrar-se-á que o paradoxo começa por nascer em Maquiavel, o qual, porém, deixa-o em aberto ao colocar a liberdade tão-só dentro de um contexto de governação. Spinoza, contudo, dará um passo em frente na sua abordagem à liberdade política. Ele aborda esta problemática diretamente nos seus dois tratados políticos e ambos expressam o mesmo entendimento da liberdade, embora através de diferentes instâncias terminológicas. A solução spinozana combina um conjunto de critérios variados para a determinação da liberdade política, tanto da perspectiva do indivíduo como da perspectiva do Estado. Todavia, a sua combinação não é simples cumulação, mas sim uma complexa escala permitindo medir a liberdade em graus. Dessa maneira, Spinoza consegue fazer com que diferentes tipos de liberdade se compatibilizem com diferentes tipos de obediência.

Modern political philosophy, especially since Machiavelli, intends to uncover what politics actually is, and in order to achieve this it often needs to penetrate into disciplines not immediately related to politics and assimilate for itself additional concepts and methodologies. Thus, it appears to be interdisciplinary in the manipulation of specific conceptual instruments. Since there is a methodological shift in modernity imposing the individual person as a basic starting-point of political philosophy, which is expressed in a language of rights, the birth of this juridical-political interdisciplinarity is to be found in a table of concepts established in the science of law and applicable to political philosophy. In order to further understand this, the origins of Grotius’s definitions of ius must be sought out, since they set the background for the bridge he architected between law and political philosophy to be crossed by subsequent modern political philosophers. The solidity of this theoretical basis for interdisciplinary political philosophy depends upon the simultaneity of all of Grotius’s different meanings of ius: it is from this foundation that seventeenth-century political philosophy can begin from.